Jane Manning

Generation 3: Improved performance at lower cost

This paper reports recent progress by SunPower Corporation to commercialize the Generation 3 product. The Generation 3 product has been designed to deliver both increased performance and lower manufacturing cost. Improved performance was achieved through optimization of the diffusion recombination losses. A conversion efficiency of 24.2% was achieved on a champion cell made on production equipment using a production wafer, 155.1cm2 n-type CZ. This result was verified by the National Renewable Energy testing Laboratory. Modules made with Generation 3 cells were measured by NREL to have > 20.4% total area efficiency (>332W with 1.63m2 modules). This paper presents the design changes before detailing the resulting performance.